Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-crash Recruits

Summary

Becoming a young Wall Street banker is like pledging the world's most lucrative and soul-crushing fraternity. Every year, thousands of eager college graduates are hired by the world's financial giants, where they're taught the secrets of making obscene amounts of money-- as well as how to dress, talk, date, drink, and schmooze like real financiers.

YOUNG MONEYInside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

YOUNG MONEY is the inside story of this well-guarded world. Kevin Roose, New York magazine business writer and author of the critically acclaimed The Unlikely Disciple, spent more than three years shadowing eight entry-level workers at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and other leading investment firms. Roose chronicled their triumphs and disappointments, their million-dollar trades and runaway Excel spreadsheets, and got an unprecedented (and unauthorized) glimpse of the financial world's initiation process.

Roose's young bankers are exposed to the exhausting workloads, huge bonuses, and recreational drugs that have always characterized Wall Street life. But they experience something new, too: an industry forever changed by the massive financial collapse of 2008. And as they get their Wall Street educations, they face hard questions about morality, prestige, and the value of their work.

YOUNG MONEY is more than an exposé of excess; it's the story of how the financial crisis changed a generation-and remade Wall Street from the bottom up.

Reviews

Enjoyable book, the insight of young people’s life in the banking industry. I have seen M&A people and it’s crazy hours and life. Impressive to have been able to follow these individuals over such a long time, considering they are young and rich.

this is really jsut a collection of case study examples of college graduates starting careers in the banking and finance industry. Interesting enough and well written, but not really worth reading a whole book about.

Read from March 08 to 11, 2014This book is a look at the aftermath of that crisis and follows 8 newbies on Wall Street from 2010-2013.The basics: Their lives suck, but they make great money.The book reads quickly and while I would have liked a little more explanation of some of the job titles, acronyms, and the whats-its of finance, adding all of that would have slowed it down a lot. It's a good introduction to what it's like now for new recruits. I'm looking forward to skimming and viewing a few of the books (and a couple of movies) mentioned throughout Young Money.Reading about the experiences of these young analysts definitely shows how someone could turn into one of the douchebags of Wall Street we all seem to be familiar with. The long hours, little recognition, tons of stress, no social life outside of work, and bosses that just keep piling on the work can definitely lead to excessive drinking, drug use, and depression.But by the end of the book, there's definitely a little hope that Wall Street has changed its ways.